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Tag: university of california

Six years ago, FBI agents knocked on the door of three honor students at the University of California in Davis because the roommates’ AT&T wireless router was used to access child pornography.

“When it became pounding, I stumbled out to open the front door – to the complete and utter shock of having FBI agents on my front porch shoving a warrant in my face and suddenly appearing armed in my home,” Caitlin Fitzgerald wrote in a letter to the FBI two weeks ago, the Sacramento Bee reports. “Even thinking about it now, years later, my stomach starts to tighten.”

Turns out, the roommates’ 22-year-old neighbor was downloading child pornography by using “his great computer savvy” to hack into their password-protected wireless account, according to federal court records.

Today, the neighbor Alexander Nathan Norris is scheduled to be sentenced in federal court in Sacramento, where prosecutors are calling for a 17.5-year sentence on charges of possession and distribution of material involving the sexual exploitation of minors.

“This case is not a run-of-the mill child pornography case because the defendant hacked into and used his neighbors’ password-protected wireless internet to download and distribute child pornography, thereby roping innocent bystanders into his criminal activity,” Assistant U.S. Attorneys Matthew Morris and Shelley Weger wrote in their sentencing memorandum to the judge.

The FBI is trying to identify the black-clad rioters who disrupted a peaceful protest at the University of California, Berkeley last week.

About 100 to 150 people dressed in all black, with their faces covered, stormed a university plaza and chucked fireworks, rocks and Molotov cocktails at police to protest right-wing speaker Milo Yiannopoulos.

UC Berkeley officials described the rioters as a paramilitary force that had “essentially raided the campus,” Berkeleyside reports.

The rioting caused about $100,000 in damage at the MLK student union.

“They came in a military fashion, they were well-rehearsed,” said UC Berkeley spokesman Dan Mogulof on the night of the protests. “They seemed armed and dangerous.”

UC Berkeley Professor Robert Reich believes that the rioters may have been part of a right-wing group bent on causing chaos to damage the credibility of peaceful protesters.

When it comes to dumb, divisive stunts, the case of the U.S. Customs and Border Protection and the University of California-Irvine deserves special recognition.

It’s about intolerance, political correctness on steroids and plain old-fashioned selfishness.

Here’s what happened:

UC Irvine planned to include the Border Patrol in a career fair. The agency offers decent-paying, professional jobs that some students might have been interested in pursuing.

But other students freaked. They collected more than 650 signatures on a petition saying the Border Patrol’s presence on campus was a “blatant disregard to undocumented students’ safety and well-being.”

The student body president said allowing the agents on campus for the job fair would send a message “that undocumented students are not welcome.”

The school has about 500 undocumented students – and, sure, some of them might have avoided the Border Patrol booth.

That’s how it goes in the marketplace of ideas. Any campus bristling with opposing viewpoints will have something going on that some students find unappealing. But you don’t ban cheeseburgers to protect the feelings of the vegetarians.

Besides, the Border Patrol was looking for recruits, not people to apprehend.

Former Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano took over as the president of the University of California on Monday, but she’s already facing challenges.

A group of student activists are asking for a “no-confidence” vote to express disapproval over her hiring, the Associated Press reports.

The activists said Napolitano is a bad choice because she’ll be overseeing a campus where protests and residents living in the U.S. illegally are going school, the AP wrote.

“There are a lot of students with some very large concerns centered around her past history in Homeland Security,” University of California Student Association President Kareem Aref said. “Students are concerned that her presidency may be accompanied by a militarization of the UC.”

President Obama soon will have to replace Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano after she announced Friday that she’s resigning to head the University of California system, the Washington Post reports.

Napolitano plans to resign in September, which gives Obama a little more than a month to find a replacement.

The White House gave no indication of a deadline or about who is in the running, The Post reported.

The next Homeland Security secretary is important because he or she will be responsible for overhauling the immigration system.

Janet Napolitano, who had been a steady hand in the Obama administration for more than four years, announced Friday she was stepping down as head of the Department of Homeland Security to take a job as president of the University of California system.

“For more than four years I have had the privilege of serving President Obama and his Administration as the Secretary of Homeland Security,” she said in a statement.

“The opportunity to work with the dedicated men and women of the Department of Homeland Security, who serve on the frontlines of our nation’s efforts to protect our communities and families from harm, has been the highlight of my professional career.

“We have worked together to minimize threats of all kinds to the American public. The Department has improved the safety of travelers; implemented smart steps that make our immigration system more fair and focused while deploying record resources to protect our nation’s borders; worked with states to build resiliency and make our nation’s emergency and disaster response capabilities more robust; and partnered with the private sector to improve our cybersecurity.

“After four plus years of focusing on these challenges, I will be nominated as the next President of the University of California to play a role in educating our nation’s next generation of leaders.”